Market In France There For The Asking

August 25, 1986|By Dick Marlowe of the Sentinel Staff

Laurence Artaud is the model of a modern merchandiser. Wearing a hair style popularized by Dorothy Hamill, a seersucker suit from London, Italian shoes and a French scarf around her American shirt, Artaud would be well- dressed on any continent.

But the 26-year-old graduate of Sorbonne University is neither a fashion designer nor a buyer for a Champs Elysees boutique. She is a trade specialist and the newest addition to the U.S. Department of Commerce staff at the American Embassy in Paris. In Florida last week to get a better feel for one of France's top five trading partners among U.S. states, Artaud had a message for Central Florida manufacturers and exporters: The time is right for testing the French marketplace.

Because the dollar has dropped drastically in value against the franc, Artaud said, there is a growing demand for American products throughout France. Although she was sent to Central Florida because it is emerging as a high-technology stronghold, Artaud also believes there are low-tech and no- tech products here that would prove popular with French consumers.

Jack Marshall, the Commerce Department trade specialist based in Orlando who ushered Artaud around Central Florida, concurred that area manufacturers may be missing a bet by ignoring the French market and that the scenario she described is pretty much the same in other nations of the world.

France, Artaud explained, tries to balance its imports from the European market, the United States and Japan. While the United States has been pretty much priced out of the French market for the past decade because of the strength of the dollar, she added, French buyers now can afford American-made products.

But the problem, Artaud and Marshall agreed, is that some Central Florida manufacturers just don't want to go to the trouble or to take the risks involved with exploring the French market. Some smaller manufacturers, they said, simply feel that bigger companies will beat them in foreign markets both with lower prices and with established channels of distribution.

As for which Central Florida products might sell in the French market, Artaud said that, although France is considered the fashion capital of the world, it still likes to buy bathing suits, T-shirts, shoes and other apparel made in the United States.

Marshall recited the story of a South Florida manufacturer who went to France in search of new business and came back with ''close to a million dollars worth of orders for scratch-and-smell T-shirts.''

Asked what kinds of shoes French men might buy, Artaud struggled for the right words. ''You know,'' she said, ''the kind with pennies in them.'' There is a huge French demand, she said, not only for loafers and topsiders, but also ''for the typical Wall Street shoes for men.''

French women, she said, love American costume jewelry that is stylish and made well enough to look like the real thing. Street crime, she confessed, makes it impractical to wear gold and diamonds in France. ''That's reality,'' she said, with a shrug of her shoulders.

In the industrial sector, Artaud said, there is a growing demand for security equipment and anti-intrusion devices; electronic automotive assessories, such as beepers that warn that the seat belt is not fastened; food-processing equipment; and robotics and automation devices that would streamline French manufacturing plants. ''French buyers are looking for turn- key factories,'' she explained. ''Most of our equipment is old and obsolete.'' Artaud contended that American businesses have a lot of misconceptions about the French people, and some companies have failed there because they went poorly prepared and had not done their homework.

Others have failed, she said, because they relied too much on undercapitalized export-management companies to do a job that they should do for themselves.

One of the primary reasons that businesses strike out in France, she said, ''Is because they go through agents and distributors,'' rather than trying direct sales.

Her top advice to those who would attempt to penetrate the French market: ''Go and get some free or cheap information at your local U.S. Department of Commerce office; be more flexible and learn to adjust to French regulations; invest some money in translating promotional material into French; keep in touch with the French companies handling your products; and do a lot of follow-up.''